What’s funny is that all these groups are despised and mocked by the likes of Rachel Maddow. But yet within these groups, some of the others are despised and mocked.

For example, I am a big Ron Paul fan, and I was a speaker at the Cincinnati Tea Party. Even so, when a guy approached me and wanted to argue about the Fair Tax, I just shut down. I couldn’t refute his arguments, but the point was, I didn’t want to. I have tried arguing with Fair Tax people before, and I have found it physically exhausting.

So I think that’s how a standard conservative Republican feels when he encounters a “Paultard.” He can’t beat the guy’s arguments, but he doesn’t care. He knows that no matter what he says, the “Paultard” will still think it was a mistake to invade Iraq.

I disagree with both of you. Nothing bothers a libertarian more (well me anyways) than a person who already closed their mind to the possibility that they are wrong. I used to be a neocon, but now I guess you can say I’m a Paultard (what a word).

How do you feel about ClimateGate and all the fraud/mistakes coming out of the IPCC report now? Its not a rhetorical, but an honest question.
Your property-rights analysis of pollution remains honest and forthright.

I summarized it here. Basically, I seriously downgraded my appraisal of the science … I thought these guys were actually committed to getting the science right, and the emails (and associated program) blew that up.

In the beginning I was stunned at the depth of your hostility, and in the middle I couldn’t believe you actually thought the government was going to make things better, and in the end (after I realized you didn’t necessarily endorse the climate models, that it was always hypothetical) I was much more relaxed.

I have talked with Austro-libertarians who have rolled their eyes when a “truther” or a FairTax is approaching. And so I was just pointing out, that if you have felt that way, then you can understand how mainstream Republicans feel when a Ron Paul supporter comes up to them to start talking about blowback.

I’m not really making a recommendation or anything too profound, I’m just trying to get people to see how others are viewing a situation. Just as the Paulistinians can’t understand why mainstream Republicans aren’t even really listening to them, and just call them names, well, that’s how a truther or a birther or a blah blah blah feel too.

I say leave Israel alone. Cut off all foreign to both Israel and the Arab states. Israel is more than capable of taking care of itself. Israel is only not strong enough to deal with hostility from the US. But it can deal with indifference, which was the case until the YomKippur war.

It seems clear to me that debate never changes anyone’s mind. People are like that. As the Bible says, most people don’t care about the truth. They are not just disinterested; they are hostile to the truth. Some people will kill you for telling them the truth. No, debate helps very little. It might help those on the fence, but those on the fence usually stay on the fence.

People only change when forced by circumstances to change. Many people changed their views on gun ownership only after being mugged. Experience is the only instructor. When disaster destroys one’s world, then one is open to learning new things and seeing from a different perspective, but not before.

I had confirmation of my pessimistic attitude from PR research that divided ideas into opinions, attitudes and world views. It said that opinions are easy to change. An opinion might be one’s preference for Coke over Pepsi. Attitudes are much more difficult to change. An example of attitude would be health issues and whether one drank any soft drinks, or considered them to be unhealthy and drank none. Attitude changes are very difficult to affect and require 3 years of counseling or a major event in one’s life with deep emotional significance, such as the death of a loved one. World views are the macro views on how life works. The atheism/theism debate is an example. They are next to impossible to change. Economics certainly fits in there. They do change, but very slowly and only after disasters caused by one view accumulate to the point that one has no choice but to change.

I found that the truth has to be dug up and washed off and bits of it are all over and like Churchill anecdoted about the issue; I am constantly tripping over it falling over it and picking it up looking at it while I am standing in two feet of shite. Everyone else thinks I am crazy for trying to point out shite rolls downhill and where it is coming from and trying to make a hovercraft to get me out of the shite. They keep walking around in it and bathing in it and I can’t stand the stink.

Once I was a student, then a democrat, then a republican, then an engineer, a libertarian, an objectivist, then I became a truth scavenger, and looking forward to the sting of death. Nobody gets out of here alive.

DONT PUT A LABEL ON ME. Ok I am a TRUTHER. Damn! Now they have ruined even that reference…